Need help: Refinishing M-Parallels

[ILoveMPower]

I have a set of Non-OE M-Pars lying around with some severe clearcoat oxidation. Two of the wheels look great and the other two are bubbling up and peeling every which way. I was just going at one of them with some 180grit and it felt like it wasn't doing a damn thing. Just curious if you guys had any advice, as I've done my fair share of painting **** before, never a set of wheels.

Questions:
- What grit to use for different steps?
- Should I PAINT the wheels, or just sand them nice and paint on a new clear?
- Any advice or experience you have is much appreciated

[Tiger]

Sand them down and paint 3 times then clear 3 time. 180 grit is not gonna make a dent... take too long go down to 120. You don't have to sand to bare metal... just rough up the paint surface.

[ILoveMPower]

Yeah I just scooped up a nice variety pack from the ole Home Depot

The wheels have a nice metallic finish already, I just am not sure if I should just try to take like all the clear off and then go apeshit with some 1000 or something and try to get a nice polished finish or just go with some "alloy" look paint.

[Boone.Msi]

id go with polished, wont take too long...

[jrobbo]

Don't know if this helps or not, here is a picture of mine which I had refinished, polished lips and painted centres. I had mine done by a wheel reparier, so I can't offer any advise as to how you do it though, sorry. Good luck with your project, and post some pics when you are done!



John

[Boone.Msi]

jrobbo what color code did you paint your calipers with? is it "caliper paint" or just high temp spray paint?

[jrobbo]

It was just silver caliper paint that I picked up at the local auto-parts store, I can't remember the brand, but I will take a look when I get home from work. I don't know the color code, but they only had one type of silver.

John

[ILoveMPower]

id go with polished, wont take too long...

yeah this is all being done by hand though

[stargazer_61]

I'm not doing M-Pars, but style 5's. I did one already. Same issues as you, with the cracking, chipped clear coat. Planned on using Wurth clear on the wheel & Duplicolor silver # 378 on the center. Here's the route I took.

• Separate the center from the rim & removed tire
• Sprayed down the rim with this stuff called "Peeler" that I picked up at an auto paint supply shop. Not as harsh as other strippers they typically use
• Wire-brush cleanup of the wheel center mating surfaces
• Blasted the rim with power washer to get all the old clear off
• Now here might be the big mistake
• I did NOT sand down the rim, I used Mother's polish. Well, the three coats of clear did not stick. I was afraid of roughing up the aluminum, so I stripped it off again & just polished it
• Polished the bolts using a wire wheel on one drill mounted in a bench vise, and the bolt in another drill, then ran the bolt through more Mother's
• Re-sprayed the center with the #378 silver, then three coats of clear
• Re-assembled the wheel, tightening & torquing in a star pattern to 30lbs
• New Kumho Ecsta AST's

I just drove it about 850 miles to DC & back, averaging between 75 & 90 MPH. No issues with wheel balance or out-of-round after reassembly. However, polishing vs. clear-coating will make it hard to keep clean, but when they are clean, they shine nice It's amazing how nasty those bolts get.

[JerseySi]

I know mine are only standard 15" basketweaves style, but same theory..

The paint was very thin on mine - a good hard scrub would take it down to primer in places, so I decided to go for te polished lip & dark centres..

Started with Nitromors (paint stripper), got all the paint & primer off the lips.. unfortunately the rims are a 'crinkle' finish under the paint, so out with the 120 grit paper to smooth them down.. This was the hardest part of the whole process - more just time consuming than real hard, but it'l give your arms a good workout!
Once all the 'crinkle' was gone, I used 400 grit wet, to remove the harsh sandpaper scratches.
After the 400 grit, I used a Brillo pad (soapy fine wire wool, for doing crusty pots n pans, dunno if you yanks have them or not!).
The finish you see in the pic is straight from the brillo pad (ok, so I masked & sprayed the centres too in dark grey metallic), it's pretty shiny & scratch free but using some polishing compound on them willo be the finishing shine I think, just to take out the final very fine scratches..

Each wheel took me around 5 hours start to finish (so far), including waiting for the paint stripper to do its stuff..



Hope this helps!